VegetarianInBoston
Maynard S. Clark's Veggie and Boston Blog talks about vegetarian topics AND Boston-related topics, often intersecting them interestingly.
Maynard S. Clark is a long-time and well-known vegan in Greater Boston, who often quips in his 'elevator pitch':
"I've been vegan now for over half my natural life, longer than most human earthlings have been alive."

Monday, January 31, 2011

The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans devote more attention to vegetarian and vegan diets than any previous version of the Guidelines. The new Guidelines devote two full pages to vegetarian and vegan nutrition and point out that these eating patterns provide nutritional advantages and reduce obesity, heart disease, and overall mortality.

U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010. 7th Edition. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 2010. Available at: http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/dietaryguidelines.htm. Accessed January 31, 2011.

For information about nutrition and health, please visit www.pcrm.org/.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

MFA Offers to Help Taco Bell Solve Its Meaty Problem

By Nathan Runkle

There has been a lot of media attention this week over the recent lawsuit against Taco Bell, alleging the company's "meat mixture" contains only 36 percent meat instead of the 40 percent required to fit the definition of beef. But Mercy For Animals has a solution to Taco Bell's problem that could be a win-win for everyone, especially the animals who are cruelly slaughtered for meat.

In an open letter sent to Greg Creed, President of Taco Bell, Mercy For Animals' Executive Director, Nathan Runkle, asks:

Why not "Think Outside the Bun" and switch to a healthy and delicious vegan meat substitute and cash in on the growing demand for meatless meal options?

The letter continues:

Taco Bell customers would lose their appetites if they saw how cows raised for beef are inflicted with third degree burns (hot-iron branding), have their testicles ripped from their scrotums and their horns burned out of their skulls - all without any painkillers. Undercover investigations have revealed sick and injured animals routinely entering the human food supply. At slaughter, improper stunning condemns many animals to being skinned and dismembered while still alive, conscious and suffering.

Cruelty to animals aside, the United Nations is calling for a global shift toward a vegan diet, saying that this is crucial to saving the world population from hunger, fuel shortages and the worst impacts of climate change. And according to the American Dietetic Association, vegan diets provide powerful protection against many deadly diseases, including the three biggest killers in the United States: heart disease, many types of cancer, and strokes.

The letter concludes:

Human health, environmental degradation, cruelty to animals and false advertising allegations are all very serious issues, but Taco Bell can tackle these problems, and more, by adopting and promoting a healthy and humane vegan menu. There is simply no better time than right now to salvage your company's reputation and tap into a growing market for vegan foods. In fact, the National Restaurant Association says that vegan menu options are a "hot trend" for 2011. And with Taco Bell's 12 authentic (and vegan) seasonings and spices, your customers can get the same tastes and textures they know and love with plant-based meat substitutes without all the saturated fat, cholesterol and cruelty associated with animal flesh.

Mercy For Animals is ready and willing to assist Taco Bell in making the socially responsible switch to a healthy, humane and honest vegan menu. We look forward to your response.

While we wait for Taco Bell's response, concerned consumers can ensure they aren't being served a side of "mystery meat" by switching to a plant-based diet. Click here to order a FREEVegetarian Starter Kit and begin your journey toward meatless living.

Hungry for ChangeA new Foresight Report, featuring contributions from 400 researchers around the world, calls for a drastic reduction in global meat consumption to help meet the food demands of the growing human population and end world hunger.

"The Foresight study shows that the food system is already failing in at least two ways. Firstly, it is unsustainable, with resources being used faster than they can be naturally replenished. Secondly, a billion people are going hungry with another billion people suffering from 'hidden hunger', whilst a billion people are over-consuming," says Professor Sir John Beddington, the British Government's Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Foresight research program.

The researchers indicate that grain-fed meat (particularly pigs and poultry) have "serious implications for competition for land, water and other inputs" and that "a reduction in the amount of meat consumed in high- and middle-income countries would have multiple benefits: a reduced demand for grain, leading to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and a positive effect on health." According to the study, "Dietary changes are very significant for the future food system because, per calorie, some food items (such as grain-fed meat) require considerably more resources to produce than others."

With the global population expected to grow from 6.8 billion to more than 9 billion and annual per capita meat consumption expected to rise from nearly 82 pounds today to 115 pounds by 2050, scientists say the increase in demand on food crops to feed farmed animals will lead to higher overall food costs, increased deforestation to provide land to grow farmed animal feed crops and elevated levels of greenhouse gas emissions associated with raising animals for food. Additionally, the researchers conclude that a global shift to organic food production may only meet future food demands if combined with a "major shift in consumer diets," a tax on livestock production and other "proactive measures" to reduce global meat consumption.

This week, President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act-the first major bipartisan bill enacted by a deeply polarized congress since the election. The act will replace junk food in school lunches and vending machines with more healthful options.

Several jurisdictions have taken similar action. The Hawaii, California, New York and Florida legislatures passed resolutions recommending vegan school options. Last year, the Baltimore City public school system became the first in the nation to offer its 80,000 students a weekly meat-free lunch. According to the School Nutrition Association, 65 per cent of U.S. schools now offer vegetarian lunch options.

In the past, the USDA has used the National School Lunch Program as a dumping ground for surplus meat and dairy commodities. Not surprisingly, 90 percent of American children consume excessive amounts of fat, and only 15 per cent eat the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables. These early dietary flaws become lifelong addictions, raising the risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Years ago, soon after I had become vegetarian (today, 'soon' implies within my first ten years of being vegan), an animal advocate* phoned me with the 'urgency' of feeding stray cats who had found their way into the basement of the local Adventist church building. The church building was only used intermittently during the week (but it was used and sometimes the basement was rented out to other church and vegetarian groups), so the congregation didn't want to pay staff to care for these stray animals (who were there, not because the congregation had borught them in, but, according to Beth, because "God had brought them there to challenge the congregation to become more loving to animals").

*the late and once very strident-voiced Beth, who considered herself a Christian vegetarian, but whose 'Christian vegetarianism' was limited to blaming organize religion to not doing right by animals (perhaps you've seen that happen as you meet people)

Well, we drove over to the otherwise vacant church building and nosed around, trying to see at least one now-sheltered animal pawing through the basement; we could not. But Beth uttered one vitriolic comment after the other about the cold, heartless, cruel, congregation who wouldn't care for these cats and had decided, after a week of deliberations and the inability to get them 'adopted out', to have them euthanized (I guess that local shelters were full).

Beth's heart was exercised; she was distraught, and I could worry about Beth's health because she was elderly (looked about 20+ years younger on a vegetarian diet, but she let herself get SO dreadfully worked up on such issues that I feared she'd lose that entire 20+ years of 'slack' on the stray cats).

I guess that the cats were euthanized, and later, Beth died (presumaby, NOT because of her emotional work-up over the cats because she lived several decades after this, equally worked up over other 'issues' of animal suffering.

My point is that suffering is one fo the several issues on a multidimensional axis; overt cruelty is another dimension; other issues are on that multidimensional grid, whether or not we realize them.

"Whatever we decide needs to improve sustainability of the overall situation."

Beth did not offer a sustainable solution that worked for everyone (including farmed animals); few 'pet companions' offer any real, long-term solutions, either.

Pet 'ownership' or 'companionship' (as if changing the noun we use for these situations makes a material difference) may not be sustainable; animals in the wild are in a real pickle, also, as are humans in the developing world.

Choosing within ourselves to NOT cause harm overtly is one choice we can make; we can make a difference today by becoming vegan, BUT that choice will not resolve ALL suffering lf ALL other persons, but neither will giving money to 'animal protection' organizations (and it might actually pay them to do things which perpetuate the wicked system of food production and animal exploitation and abuse, and like neuroses in otherwise mentally healthy persons, their rationales may merely cover up the wrongs they are doing so that not even they are able to admit or acknowledge these wrongs and injustices to themselves, or within their own minds.

What should a Christian church do? a VEGETARIAN Christian church in which at that time a large number of the congregants may have been vegans?

Thursday, January 20, 2011

I'm a vegan from Boston. There are 5 million vegetarians in the USA, according to one survey, but VRG (Vegetarian Resource Group) commissioned a study that might lead us to believe there are many more.

www.BostonVeg.org

http://www.Maynard.Clark.GooglePages.com

I believe that everyone SHOULD be vegan, and the disparity between what is and what ought to be gives rise to some serious ethical reflection about the moral 'lack of standing' of homo sapiens.

I don't believe in ETHER US political party; I think that both are disasters, but ... I have a preference... without writing a blank check (of endorsement) to either of them or anyone else.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Culture Building Goals of the Vegetarian Resource Centera subgroup of Vegetarian Resource Center

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3748439

Culture Building has LONG been a CORE GOAL of the Vegetarian Resource Center. Those who support and work towards culture building with vegan values are invited to participate in this subgroup of the Vegetarian Resource Center, whether or not they have ever previously donated money or time or participated as volunteers in the Vegetarian Resource Center or in the of the Vegetarian Resource Center's outreach and/or development projects.

Monday, January 10, 2011

In the past, I have written about the market's need for a portion-control soymilk business, business producing soymilk as coffee creamers in small portions.

My reading is that somewhere, somehow, such products are on the market, but I'm unsure where that it.

When the dairies that make portion-controlled items produce those products, it's not done by dairies that produce soymilk exclusively (if at all).

We ought to ASK for this kind of product; then businesses would rise up to produce it.

Is there any reason that there ought NOT to be such enterprises, sponsored by private or venture capital?

For instance, if an entrepreneur wanted to create a portion-control soymilk business, s/he would research the portion-control milk business, see what equipment is used to make these products, scope out the suppliers of the equipment and supplies that are used, create 2 or more plans for developing the business (unique and nonunique) discern whether either plan is feasible (as a unique producer of portion-controlled soymilk coffee creamers AND as a contractor to portion-controlled creamers to produce soymilk 'runs' - no pun intended) for coffee marketers at various levels.

Monday, January 03, 2011

A popular discussion (and I think a poorly-developed idea) that is wending its way through vegetarian e-mail discussion venues asks:

Does worldview condition our likelihood of reverencing the personhood of other species?

This idea has been made into books (as in An Unnatural Order: Why We Are Destroying The Planet and Each Other by Jim Mason and Peter Singer, 2005), where (in 'feminist' style, Mason and Singer claim that theism is hierarchical, while naturalism is not; hierarchical approaches to nature oppress animals and women; therefore, justice must abolish both in one fell swoop.

The issue has been approached a number of ways critically. In The Spectre of Speciesism, Paul Waldau asks whether Buddhism has a better historical record on animals than the monotheistic Abrahamic religions; he concludes that they do not.

VeggieTart (one of the early respondents) offered a succinct and excellent response, demonstrating that worldview, while possibly correlated in individuals, is not an automatic determinant of one's understanding of the ethical issues that make one an ethical vegan.

A secular approach that is not antagonist to religious or theistic worldviews is Ethical Culture (inspired and founded by Kantian Felix Adler in the 19th century), which teaches (www.AEU.org) that ethics is autonomous (independent of religious worldview) - that is, one does have enough rational capacity (natural reason, inner 'light', etc.) to reach stable and sustainable moral conclusions without reaching agreement or final understanding of religious truth (or error).

Ethical vegans should be as astute as Adler and his followers.

So, on the question of whether the TYPE of worldview influences the adherents' approach to the personhood of other species, surely it does, but not always in black-and-white, either-or ways. A better approach, I suggest, would be that of comparative religionists that asks each student to explore this question in depth; if only superficial analyses are offered, lower grades are assigned.

So, look deep, dig deeply, and ask the question of whether or not there could be insight and justice for animals in EACH of the intellectual outlook options on ultimate questions. That's precisely my long-term point. And again, ethical vegans who really DO NOT KNOW one way or the other on ultimate questions should be as astute as Adler and his followers. Otherwise, THEIR ethical insights are only topical advances, not wholesale advances in ethical analysis.

Sunday, January 02, 2011

Krister Stendahl, Lutheran Bishop of Sweden and past Dean of Harvard Divinity School, is credited with creating "Stendahl's three rules of religious understanding", which he presented in a 1985 press conference in Stockholm, Sweden, in response to vocal opposition to the building of a temple there by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

His rules are as follows:

(1) When you are trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.

(2) Don't compare your best to their worst.

(3) Leave room for "holy envy." (By this Stendahl meant that you should be willing to recognize elements in the other religious tradition or faith that you admire and wish could, in some way, be reflected in your own religious tradition or faith.)

I think that we who aspire to religious understanding have reason to sometimes think that THEIR religion is bettern than OUR own PRACTICE in the following areas (and I remember my own mother's comment about the unitarian Fellowship movement as being a community of caring folks who aspire to simple values, and there is much continuity between some of the BEST values THOSE unitarians practiced and TRUE Christian faith as Baptists understand their faith in Christ. That was not an endorsement of unitarianism or unitarian theology, but rather a critical observation about how SOME of the local people did find some moral legitimacy in realities they observed and how they had attempted to put those values into practice.

It took me years to put her observations into a better frame of reference; it was not an endorsement; it was a religious look at another group's 'moment' of religious searching and insight.

Stendahl is perhaps most famous for his publication of the article "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West." This article, along with the later publication of the book Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, conveys a new idea in Pauline studies suggesting that scholarship dating all the way back to Augustine may miss the context and thesis of Paul. His main point revolves around the early tension in Christianity between Jewish Christians and Gentile converts. He specifically argues that later interpreters of Paul have assumed a hyper-active conscience when they have begun exegesis of his works. As a result, they have suggested an overly psychological interpretation of the apostle Paul, that Paul himself would most likely not have understood at all for himself.[1]

Stendahl is credited with creating Stendahl's three rules of religious understanding, which he presented in a 1985 press conference in Stockholm, Sweden, in response to vocal opposition to the building of a temple there by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His rules are as follows:

(1) When you are trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.

(2) Don't compare your best to their worst.

(3) Leave room for "holy envy." (By this Stendahl meant that you should be willing to recognize elements in the other religious tradition or faith that you admire and wish could, in some way, be reflected in your own religious tradition or faith.)

Selected bibliography

Stendahl, Krister. The school of St. Matthew, and its use of the Old Testament. Uppsala: C. W. K. Gleerup, Lund, 1954; 2nd ed. 1968.

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About Me

In past three years, I completed REACH Intermediate (Harvard), Research Administration (Emmanuel College RAC/GCRA), NIH rDNA, and RTP (HSPH) Certificates. Completing Capstone research and thesis after two years of graduate courses for Master of Science in Management (MSM in Research Administration) in Boston's Emmanuel College. Have been working at Harvard for a VERY long time - there's SO much here!

I've been vegan over half my life. That's longer than most human earthlings (and most NONHUMAN earthlings) have been alive. All that time, I've been making connections for plant-based diets - and doing that through the Vegetarian Resource Center since 1993 (and before that through various strategies and structures.

My observation is that the vegan *movement* is constituted by fellow humans who have awakened to moral sensitivity in our individual observations of the populated world around us, a world that filled plentifully with persons - not only human, but also nonhuman, and that all persons are such that moral consideration is due to all of them. We cannot give that consideration individually; therefore, we must become persons of principle, who resolve our ethical duties towards other persons at a level of principle and self-regulation. I believe in 'ahimsa' or 'dynamic injury' as the proper regulatory principle for human behavior.

I also believe that many practicing vegans have attached nonessentials to being vegan, which often are their political aspirations and their willingness to 'entitle' certain kinds of activity 'over against' things that they wish to reduce with the same energy with which they are holding out their idea of what veganism is. I think that the idea of veganism is independent of that, tht it is defined BY (a) purely plant-based diets without the inclusion of honey or anything from animal or insect and (b) a principle of non-injury that is grounded in one's sense of the moral considerableness of personhood, regardless of how those persons act. One's ability to recognize those claims in any particular case are abetted or abated by the context in which those others are experienced and how they impact us. At the least, we have, I think as a vegan for ethical reasons, a duty to not cause needless harm to others, and those needless harms in mid-2014 would be harms for our clothing, food, shelter, medicinal ingredients, entertainment, etc.

Where there are challenges to living by those principles, we need, I believe as an ethical vegan, to agitate and organize for effective means to realize optimal ways to realize those values in the material world where we find ourselves.